Rejuvenated

December 1, 2010

Airbus agreed late on Tuesday to upgrade its best-selling A320 passenger jet with new engines in a bid to offer fuel savings and fend off emerging competitors, sources familiar with the matter said.

Source: http://news.airwise.com/story/view/1291166224.html

PresRDC

Game on!!

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/be4d4616-f...#axzz16rvpcSPQ

This is the biggest thing that has happened in my career. Going to be a very busy 2011 for me.

YuropFlyer

Just read about it.. quite serious thing, 15% less fuel promised.

Does Boeing have any plans for their 737s to upgrade as well? (I assume that's still fighting with the 737?)

PresRDC

It remains to be seen. Boeing's fundamental problem is that the 737 sits much lower to the ground than the A320 and the engine diameters for both the Leap-X or the PurePower engine are too big, meaning that they'd have to redesign the landing gear to elevate the plane. That would be a fairly substantial re-design. This is in addition to having the same engineering resource issues that Airbus faces (and which delayed the A320 NEO launch by about 2 months).

More likely is that Boeing will in the near future (sometime in late 2011 or early 2012, I'd guess) launch a new airplane (the 797?) with a later EIS than the A320 NEO, but, one would assume, with even better operational improvements over the NEO. Much of this will depend on how much traction in the market Airbus gets with the NEO. While its operational performance will be significantly better than the A320 Classic, it will also be more costly (we think US$7 - US$8 million more per aircraft).

FriendlySkies

Very nice! I wish we would see UA order some more A320s!

jbcarioca

Congratulations. In principle I should be a geared turbo fan also, but i don't know enough about the subject. I suspect we all will fairly soon.

N830MH

I agree. Lets DL will order newest A321NEO or A320NEO, too. It will be a logical choices from US Airlines.

Here its official announcement from Airbus:

http://www.airbus.com/en/presscentre...od/1291183726/

Thanks all.

PresRDC

It's very interesting technology. Basically, it allows the fan to rotate at a different speed than the shaft, meaning that each can rotate at its optimal speed for efficency (slow for the fan, fast for the shaft).

jbcarioca

That is about the limit of my knowledge. I read Aviation Week religiously but not too much more.

I recall from piston days that geared props always were more delicate than non-geared ones were. I always got TBO from my C421 and B206 but few people did because they would not use enough finess in prop adjustments.

I also remember from all the PT-6 powered aircraft I've had that free shafts are durable but inefficient. From a handful of turbofans I always recall the tradeoffs that were made between optimal stage design, until the idea of geared turbines kept cropping up, but never quite made the transition.

Now you seem to have conquered the hurdles, although there are still naysayers. This is a long winded way to ask a couple of questions:
1) Is the problem of gear delicacy/durability well and truly solved?
2) Is the operating efficiency enough higher to justfy the extra complexity?
3) Are the lifetime operating costs definitely lower than evolution of more conventional designs?

These are the basic economic questions everybody is asking, i know, but you know far about it that anybody else opining here, so I'd be very interested to know your views. Clearly you are a fan

PresRDC

Good questions. I'm not a technical guy, so my ability to address these questions is limited. I've been more involved with the marketing strategy, particularly the contracts and will be active in the negotiations with target customers.

Everything I'm being told is that the engine, in test, is performing at or better than expectations. While the NEO is a new program, the core engine has been in development for quite some time and had previously been selected to power the MRJ, the C-Series and Irkuit's new aircraft.

tonywestsider

Yes, the entire Bombardier C-series will be powered by geared turbofans. Their launch will be in 2013.

YVR Cockroach

Hopefully Airbus won't get burned a second time by GTF. The A340 was supposed to be powered by a P&W GTF engine which failed horribly (never even made it onto the plane). The IAE2500 was a poor substitute.

N830MH

Yep, thats will be 3 more years away from 2010. I can't wait to see newest CSeries. It will so beautification newest aircraft will coming out the hanger.

PresRDC

CFM56-5C, not the V2500.

This time is quite different. The engine has been in test for over 3 years and has flown on an Airbus A340-600 test aircraft for several months.

Rejuvenated

February 8, 2011

Aircraft parts supplier Goodrich said it expects to win new business on an upgraded Airbus A320 plane with better engines.

Source: http://news.airwise.com/story/view/1297203726.html